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Table of Contents
About The Book
She thought a Greek island would save her life.
Instead, it showed her how the world ends.
Pip’s life has stalled. A university dropout stuck working at a Melbourne lobster shack, she’s drifting through her twenties with no direction and no real plan for the future. Then her estranged father dies, leaving her unexpectedly wealthy — and completely alone.
When Pip meets Sasha, a charismatic scholar obsessed with Balkan literature, the two make an impulsive decision: escape everything and start over on a remote Greek island.
But paradise isn’t what they imagined.
Instead of a carefree bohemian life, Pip and Sasha find themselves trapped in a community unraveling under the pressure of environmental collapse, class tensions, tourism, and the mistakes of generations past. As the island begins to fracture around them, Pip is forced to confront what we inherit from our families, from history, and from a world on the brink of disaster.
Sharp, provocative, and impossible to put down, The Ruiners is a dazzling literary novel about love, ambition, climate anxiety, political disillusionment, and the search for meaning in a collapsing world.
“Is there any hope for us? … this book does it brilliantly.” — Lauren Oyler
“With scathing wit and genuine narrative flair…” — Vincenzo Latronico
Instead, it showed her how the world ends.
Pip’s life has stalled. A university dropout stuck working at a Melbourne lobster shack, she’s drifting through her twenties with no direction and no real plan for the future. Then her estranged father dies, leaving her unexpectedly wealthy — and completely alone.
When Pip meets Sasha, a charismatic scholar obsessed with Balkan literature, the two make an impulsive decision: escape everything and start over on a remote Greek island.
But paradise isn’t what they imagined.
Instead of a carefree bohemian life, Pip and Sasha find themselves trapped in a community unraveling under the pressure of environmental collapse, class tensions, tourism, and the mistakes of generations past. As the island begins to fracture around them, Pip is forced to confront what we inherit from our families, from history, and from a world on the brink of disaster.
Sharp, provocative, and impossible to put down, The Ruiners is a dazzling literary novel about love, ambition, climate anxiety, political disillusionment, and the search for meaning in a collapsing world.
“Is there any hope for us? … this book does it brilliantly.” — Lauren Oyler
“With scathing wit and genuine narrative flair…” — Vincenzo Latronico
About The Author
Photograph by Deema Al Huqail
Ellena Savage is the author of the critically acclaimed essay collection Blueberries (2020). Her stories and essays have been published widely and supported by numerous grants and residential fellowships. The Ruiners is Ellena’s first novel, appearing with Summit Books Australia, Sceptre UK, and Catapult Books in the US.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia (April 28, 2026)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781761638824
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Raves and Reviews
'A smart novel.'
– Good Weekend
'A playful and subversive take on Great Expectations . . . Savage is a sharp, incisive writer with a lot to say about the world. But it’s what she says about people and life that really hits home here. It’s all ridiculous, she seems to be saying, it’s all wonderful.'
– Bec Kavanagh, The Guardian
'Clever yet sarcastic, droll and exaggerated, with a tone and sense of humour that echoes fellow Antipodean writers Ella Baxter, Bri Lee and Rebecca K Reilly.'
– NZ Listener
'This book is clever, taut and funny – particularly in its chilling satire of the radical left: drowning in discourse, crippled by theory and "hopelessly attached to a politics that has little reality on earth".'
– Steph Harmon, The Guardian
‘Ellena Savage is savagely smart and talented’
– Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake
‘Either a genius or a witch, or my dream coupling of the two’
– Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot
‘I read The Ruiners with an ever more intense combination of excitement, compassion and Schadenfreude. With a scathing wit and genuine narrative flair, Ellena Savage has written a contemporary parable about gentrification, class, climate change and the need for political action in a society that seems to leave it less and less agency.’
– Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
‘The Ruiners is a thrilling, stylish novel of ambition, about intellectual and romantic and political ambition: how it shapes us and we shape, or fail to shape, our world with it in turn. It's the rare contemporary novel that feels both timeless and newsfeed relevant ... but it was the book's sneakily profound political critique, which is of course inseparable from those characters and their relationships, that impressed me most. Is there any hope for us? is not a question we can answer, and this book does it brilliantly.’
– Lauren Olyer, author of No Judgement
‘Ruiners is a riot – a book full of wild energy and uncompromising wit, with a huge heart. Like all my favourite writers, Savage lets no one off the hook but has compassion for everyone. I loved it.’
– Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace
Resources and Downloads
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Book Cover Image (jpg): The Ruiners
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